Supplier PO Approval Tracker

An internal tool that replaces email-and-spreadsheet purchase-order approvals with a clear, auditable workflow: create POs, route them for approval, and notify approvers by email — with a status dashboard for the ops team.

Goals

• Give every PO a clear, auditable approval trail.
• Cut approval turnaround time with email notifications.
• Show PO status at a glance for the ops team.

Features

• PO creation — Create a purchase order with supplier, lines and totals.
  • A PO can be created with at least one line item and a computed total.
  • Totals recalculate when line items change.
• Approval workflow — Submit for approval; approve/reject with a note.
  • Submitting a PO moves it to "pending" and records the submitter.
  • Approve/reject records the actor, timestamp and note.
• Email notifications — Notify approvers when action is needed.
  • Approvers receive an email when a PO is submitted for approval.
• Status dashboard — List and filter POs by status.
  • POs can be filtered by status and ordered by date.

Data model

PurchaseOrder

A purchase order routed through the approval workflow.

Field	Type	Nullable	Notes
id	uuid	no
company_id	uuid	no	Multi-tenancy scope.
supplier	text	no
status	enum(draft|pending|approved|rejected)	no
total	decimal(12,2)	no
note	text	yes
created_at	timestamptz	no

Relations:

• has many PurchaseOrderLine
• belongs to User (submitter)

Indexes:

• (company_id, status)

PurchaseOrderLine

A single line item on a purchase order.

Field	Type	Nullable	Notes
id	uuid	no
purchase_order_id	uuid	no
description	text	no
quantity	integer	no
unit_price	decimal(12,2)	no

Relations:

• belongs to PurchaseOrder

Indexes:

• (purchase_order_id)

Pages

/purchase-orders

List and filter purchase orders by status.

Components:

• StatusFilter
• PurchaseOrderTable

States: empty, loading

/purchase-orders/new

Create a new purchase order with line items.

Components:

• PurchaseOrderForm
• LineItemEditor

/purchase-orders/[id]

View a PO and approve/reject it.

Components:

• PurchaseOrderDetail
• ApprovalActions

Milestones

1. Foundation — Stand up the app, DB and auth.
2. PO & approval — Core PO lifecycle and approvals.
3. Notifications & dashboard — Email + status visibility.

Tasks

Foundation

• Scaffold Next.js app with Ensign defaults (Urgent · S)
• Wire Postgres + Drizzle (Urgent · S)
• Integrate ensign-sso auth (company_id scoping) (High · M)

PO & approval

• Model PurchaseOrder + line items (Urgent · M)
• Build PO create/edit form (High · M)
• Implement submit / approve / reject with notes (High · M)

Notifications & dashboard

• Send approval-needed emails (Medium · S)
• Build status dashboard with filters (Medium · M)

Non-functional requirements

• Security — All access gated by ensign-sso; every query scoped by company_id.
• Auditability — Approval events are append-only and never mutated.
• Performance — PO list paginated; p95 under 300ms at 10k POs.

Risks

• Email delivery failures leave approvers unaware of pending POs. — Show a pending-approvals badge in-app so email is not the only channel.
• Approval trail could be edited after the fact, undermining auditability. — Append-only approval events; never mutate past decisions.

Open questions

• Should approval thresholds vary by PO total?
• Who can create POs — any user, or a specific role?

Out of scope

• Xero/Sage accounting integration
• Multi-step approval chains
• Supplier self-service portal